Windows Special Folders Support

As a consequence, you cannot simply use a path to a special folder. You have to look it up first. Nearly all Microsoft APIs/platforms/technologies provide some way to look up these special folders. What's even more complicated is that these lookups seem to be about as varied as the folder names themselves.

Not only do newer technologies reflect completely new folders, as could be expected, but each API seems to provide access to a different subset of special folders, and use different names/keys for the folders, and sometimes provide multiple partial lists via different methods/lookups/constants. Say you want to look up the location of the Windows Recycle Bin, does your API refer to this as CSIDL_BITBUCKET or FOLDERID_RecycleBinFolder, or does it provide any access to it at all?

This reference aims to provide an overview of whether your API supports a given special folder, and where to look for it.